usability

Today we are looking at a large UK supermarket stock control system. At the end of the day the staff mark down prices on the short-life items (sandwiches etc). They have a hand held scanner with a belt printer. Scan item – print label – stick label on item. Well that’s what the process is supposed to be, only this takes time (20 seconds per item) and when you have a whole shelf to do is a chore (12 items takes four minutes). Far easier to just write down the new price on a ‘discount label’ with a sharpie and stick it over the barcode (do the whole shelf in less than a minute).

Where’s the problem in that? In fact three minutes of waste (waiting time) has been eliminated. Only it is a problem…

The customer takes the item to checkout and the mark-down label is covering the barcode. The checkout colleague tries to peel it off to scan, but it doesn’t peel cleanly. So she manually enters in the SKU. And the mark-down price. And this has taken 2 minutes for one itemand the queue has grown and because of the ‘one in front’ policy they have to open a new checkout and suddenly that small problem at one end of the value chain is replaced by a bigger costlier one at the front end.

But had we not observed this we would never know that bulk price mark-downs on the hand-held device is not a nice to have, it is million dollar requirement.

Designing an enterprise application. Recently someone was grumbling to me about the statement “easy to use”. They felt it was a worthless statement; what does it actually mean? For them it had no meaning and thus should not be used at all. This is nonsense. “Easy to use” is a worthy statement that should either be treated as a non functional requirement with clearly defined acceptance criteria, or as a measurable KPI. So to start the thinking on defining what easy to use must mean to your project, try using the BDD format of given, when, then:

As an Expert User
Given I have had no training
When I have to complete <insert goal>
Then I will be able to accomplish it in under five minutes

As a Novice User
Given I have had no training
When I have to complete <insert goal>
Then I will be able to accomplish it in under seven minutes

You’ve logged into your on-line banking checked your balance, paid your bills. What do you do now? Click on the logout button?

What do you expect will happen now? Well given that you have actively chosen to log-out (it’s not something you are likely to click on my mistake), you’d expect to do exactly that. Logout. The next screen you get will probably be something that thanks you for on-line banking, with a cross sell for a product or two.

That’s what I assume most customers would expect. So what are Alliance and Leicester thinking about with this screen?

The customer has clicked log-out but they are still logged in?

Why?

“You are still logged in to Internet Banking – before you go have a look at Your offers.”

Excuse me, I logged out, I don’t need to be logged in for you to show me offers.

Worse: “Are you sure you want to log out?”

OF COURSE I WANT TO LOG OUT!!! Why else would I have clicked the link.

Alliance and Leicester fail here in a fundamental usability rule, that of managing the customer’s expectation. In an application where security isn’t paramount this would be an error, in an application where customers expect their action of leaving their secure accounts will do exactly that… but doesn’t, is inexcusable.

Lotus Notes is a gem of a product for usability howlers. Barely a day goes by without me cursing or swearing at it. Here’s an example of its dumbness… Without thinking, what time does the meeting start? I mean, what time do I, in the UK, need to dial in to the conference call?

Over the loudspeaker comes a garbled message “…this train divides at Chester. Customers for Bangor must travel in the front four coaches of the train”.
There was a group of women behind me talking loudly, one of them picked out part of the message and was worried. The train guard (sorry, Customer Revenue Protection Officer) walked by.
One of the women got his attention, “Excuse me, we’re going to Bangor?” she said.
“Oh” said the guard. “You need to get out at Milton Keynes and walk to the front of the train”.
“What? We need to change trains?” the woman replied.
“No, it is the same train, just the front part of it.”
“Is it on the same platform?” Asked the woman.
“Yes, just walk up a little” replied the guard.
“We don’t need to cross over to another platform then?”
“No, it is the same platform, the same train”
“So why can’t we stay on this train then”
“Because this part of the train divides at Chester?”
“But we’re not going to Chester, we’re going to Bangor”
The guard was getting frustrated, “when the train stops at the next station, you just need to get out and walk up the platform, in fact to the next carraige and get on the train there”
“So why can’t we walk through the train to the next carraige?”
“Because it is a different train”
“but this train is going to Bangor isn’t it? We are on the right train aren’t we?”

And so on until a fellow passenger jumped in “when we get to Milton Keynes, I’ll show you where to go” and at Milton Keynes he led them all off the train to walk past the train divide on the platform and I’ll assume they made it to Bangor in one peice.

The point of this narative is that not everybody “gets it”. Just because you think something is straight forward or obvious doesn’t mean that your customers will. You are not your customer, be wary of making assumptions on how people will use your Great New Product.

I recently worked with a client where one of our deliverables were wireframes that illustrated how pages would be laid out and how the UI would work. We were quite pleased with the results, there was some quite complex AJAX based functionality that provided a really immersive, goal orientated experience that looked like it would make finding products easy and enjoyable. Testing the initial wireframes with users was an enlightening exercise, and demonstrated that the wireframes we had developed were not yet ready – users were not able to fulfill the goals they were set. More worrying, some of the complex functionality we were introducing just did not work (some of the navigation, filters and sorts were confusing, just presenting information on a single page would suffice).

Usability testing often gets discussed and is a good intention but all too often budgetary or time constraints mean it never happens. The user testing I refer to here impacted neither. We did our testing in a meeting room, the customer sitting at one end with a facilitator, and the team watching on the projection screen in the same room. We used a talk-aloud protocol walking through the static powerpoint wireframes that were linear in their presentation according to the ‘happy path’ to realise the customer goal. Someone took notes as we went through the wireframes (in the notes section at the bottom of the PowerPoint deck). It was quick and dirty but produced results. After a couple of sessions things that we, too close to the design, had missed. Changes to the wireframes took a few hours and allowed retesting the following day. Indeed we made some quite significant changes to the user interaction model. When we re-tested the wireframes the improvements were evident. The feedback was more positive; there were fewer blank faces, less confusion and “I’ve no idea what to do next” was never uttered. This was true iterative design in cycles that took a few hours. Compare this to the days if code was involved.

Where does this fit into the agile way of delivering software? In the agile/ lean zealot’s passion (and impatience) delivery, and their (dogmatic?) assertion that anything but code (working software) is waste, they loose focus upon what is really important, that of overall product quality. Product quality is not only zero/ minimal defects and meeting the business requirement, but also delivering something that is usable and delightful to use. Developers may do Test Driven Development, but this is based on assumptions that what they will code is right. TDD should start earlier in the process, Test Driven Design. It takes time to write your tests up-front, but we know it to be a good thing. So why not design the user interface (wireframes) and test that up front?

Last year, according to Gartner, with belts tightening, technology executives need to focus upon disruptive technologies (that cut costs). The top ten list of disruptive technologies makes strange reading. How will social computing and mash-ups cut costs (enterprise 2.0?) Most interestingly, coming in at number six on the list is “user interface”. Now let’s leave aside the fact that a “user interface’ is hardly a technology (it is how technology manifests itself to the user) I’m interested by the fact that it can be considered to be disruptive. What is disruptive about user interface design?

But think a little further. What is really disruptive is the realisation that good design is more than just adherence to functional requirements; good creative design is more than ‘bells and whistles’ or ‘gold plating’. A good user interface will cut costs by enabling the internal user base be more efficient and productive. A good user interface will enable customers to succesfully complete their transactions / goals. In a world where poor UI on enterprise applications remains, maybe user interface is indeed a disruptive technology after all.

Do you know what a URL is and what to do with it? It sounds like a stupid question, of course you know what a URL is, everybody does! But you’d be wrong. Having observed countless users interacting with websites, it is striking how many people enter the URL into their search engine. My hypothesis is that the URL bar in the browser is something technical and best left alone. But don’t just take my anecdotal evidence for it, look at the top 500 search engine keywords– in the top 20, four are URLs that could have been typed into the browser address. Look at the keywords in your web analytics, almost certainly (if yours is a B2C proposition), your URL will come in the top ten keywords for your homepage.

Lesson number one: people are not as tech savy that you think they are. If they don’t know how to use URLs, what other assumptions are you making about your customers in the product you are developing?

Lesson number two: your URL is not as important as your ability to be found in the search engines. It is refreshing to see an increasing number of companies not giving any URL in their print or TV advertising, rather “search for us on google using <insert term>”. But before you go off engaging SEO snakeoil merchants, the basics of optimising your website for search engines (SEO) are hardly rocket science (especially if you are an already trusted brand), and Google let’s you in on a lot of their secrets which is 80% of what any SEO company will tell you. Only google give it to you for free.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that you don’t need to do any design when you adopt Agile. Agile development strives to deliver business value early and often, focusing on getting working software to market as soon as possible rather than dwelling in documentation and ‘analysis paralysis’. But let’s be clear, “business value” and “working software” are not the same thing. You can quite easily get something into production that fails to generate revenue, decrease costs or whatever other yardstick you use for ‘value’. What differentiates the two of them is design. I don’t mean big up front design that details all the features and provides a concrete spec, I mean a design vision that articulates what the product goals are and a roadmap for getting there. And what is a design vision? A short statement of intent is a good place to start, and soon after a user interface mocked up in pen and ink. It is cheap and easy and helps bridge the path from idea to execution.

Last year Twitter grew by an incredible 752%. That is something too large to ignore. It’s not just individuals who are twittering, corporates are getting in on the act. But do they think before taking the plunge?

The tools for getting a social presence on the web are easy. Twitter is free, there’s little effort to setting up a blog, it is simple to plug in reviews and ratings with BazaarVoice. But with the tools comes commitment; you need to start listening and have a strategy for responding.

Listening

You can start listening by setting up Google News Alerts. You will be alerted whenever someone is talking about you (or your competitors, or anyone or anything you like). It can deliver alerts as a digest or as they happen. This gives you a fundamental tool to find out who is talking about you and where they are doing it.

Responding

Knowing people are talking about you is one thing, knowing what to do about it is another. Making a decision to start engaging in social media is the right thing to do, but with that decision comes responsibilities. This is where having a clearly thought-out strategy is essential.

The strategy starts with a role, someone responsible for the conversation. Jeremiah Owyang lists a number of oganisations who have a dedicated role for social computing and community management – Dell has a VP Communities & Conversations. This is not a PR role, it is not something that will have messages crafted by committee with formal sign-off before speaking. It is about having an authentic voice, speaking with honesty and personality. Using Twitter to broadcast your traditional press releases is more likely to alienate than win you friends and lovers (you want people to love your brand right?).

Your customers want to help

“But why?” is a question I’ve often heard asked when talking about social media. “Why would anyone want to comment, or write advice, or be bothered to ‘get social’ with us?” Good experiences and (especially) bad experiences bring out the passion in people. And then there are the people who just like to have their voice heard. There’s an often used ratio, 1:9:90 – for every one regular contributer there are 9 occasional contributers (commenter’s) and 90 ‘lurkers’ – see Jakob Neilsen’s post on this.

Even if they don’t engage in the conversation themselves, most people listen to the contributer – it is (usually) an authentic voice, and that authenticity is priceless. Word of mouth is more valuable than any advertising, it is by far the most trusted source for purchase ideas and information (funny how so many organisations when they ask that question, “how did you hear about us, they list their channels- TV, Radio, Press, but often leave out recommendation from a friend, or heard about you from an acquaintances, or even “I just know you”). The challenge is to harness the conversation that others are having and where appropriate engage in it in a natural and honest way.

Rather than questioning why someone wants to talk about your brand, or offer support to the community on your products for free, build a relationship with that person. They will feel all the better for being listened to. Invite them to customer panels, tell them about your ideas, and let them generate buzz about your product.

Some listening anecdotes

Here are three brief anecdotes of organisations who have started by listening and then engaged in conversation. To be contrasted with doing it the other way round.

A client we’ve been working with had been ignoring the conversation in technical forums. There was a wealth of discussion about issues with their hardware, fixes and work-arounds. Much of the comment, whilst positive about the brand overall, was negative about certain aspects of the product and customer service. They took the plunge and engaged in the conversation. A regular poster who was being particularly vocal (and getting a lot of response) was directly connected. His issue was simply addressed. He then posted to the forum how he had been listened to, and the negative experience was transformed into a positive experience. Inviting him to customer panels makes him feel even more valued.

A while back I posted about a negative experience with Norwich Union. I blogged about the experience – a few days later I had a comment from their Head of Customer Experience. I was listened to. NU had a face, we spoke and I will now sing the praises of Norwich Union (I’m still a customer). I’ve forgotten what the problem I has was all about.

Another blog was about a poor experience with the Fedex website. Their Application Development Team left a comment thanking me for the feedback, again I was listened to. This has erased the memory of the bad experience I had.

Speaking, not listening

I don’t know anything about confused.com internal operations, but my experience suggests the following. Someone suggested they get a Twitter account and they started tweeting. Only their tweets were for PR messages. They were not ready for inbound Tweets from customers about them.

I heard about confused.com from a friend as a good site to get a home insurance quote from. I tried it and had a far from satisfactory experience. I persevered (because of the personal recommendations) but after a bunch of techinical problems with the site I gave up.

I then actively sought out confused.com on Twitter, my thinking if they have an account I can give them my feedback direct (I am one of the 1 of the 1:9:90 who so many business people don’t understand. I also have almost 17 years of usability experience behind me which I would be happy to share with them – as a customer, not professionally). So I did a search for confused.com on Twitter and found them. I was pleased to see they had an account and wrote a tweet to @confused_com. But it seems twitter was just a mouth piece for their PR and all I was greeted with was silence. I heard nothing back.

I returned back to their website a few days later and tried again to get a quote, this time I had an even worse experience, the site failed to return any results to me. Again, I Twittered about it. I was creating some negative feedback, and feeling doubly annoyed. Not only was I having a crappy experience but they weren’t listening to me on a channel I expect to be heard. Now I am a small fish in the big ocean and easily ignored, but look at Motrin and you can see the consequences of not engaging in the Twitter conversation.

To their credit, Confused.com have recently sent me a private message on Twitter informing me they are going to start “more interactive twittering soon”. I look forward to that. If there is a lesson in this it is when getting onto Twitter you have to be ready to engage in the conversation that is likely to ensue. Have a strategy before playing with the tools.

Marc McNeill

For more than a decade Marc has been a passionate advocate of placing the customer at the heart of business, working with clients in finance, retail, government and entertainment sectors, helping them craft compelling cross channel customer experiences. Marc champions lean and agile approaches for making customer driven innovation happen. He co-authored the book Agile Experience Design. As a consultant with ThoughtWorks he brought design thinking and creativity to clients, engaging across their organisations with a focus on delivery as well as ideas. Today he is Customer Experience Director at Auto Trader. He has been known to dance and is rather partial to mangos.